Sunday, September 6, 2015

Frank Bruni is quite correct to emphasize that “quality time”
is a modern myth. It’s a fabrication designed to excuse parents from spending
enough time with family. He does not mention that this myth was invented by
feminists to assuage the guilt of working mothers who were spending so much
time on their careers that they could not spend enough time with their
children. To solve the problem, feminists invented a myth whereby it was the quality,
not the quantity of time that counted.

If Bruni had said that “quality time” is a feminist
shibboleth, he would have been tempting the goddesses. And, we can’t have that.

Bruni is writing about a yearly vacation that he and his
family take together for a week every year. It’s a family tradition, a bonding
ritual one that he had previously seen as a burden. Now, however, he sees its
value. In the past he had tried his best to spend less time with the crowd; now
he goes for the entire week and enjoys it immensely. Family rituals are good
and fun things to do; they affirm
allegiance and bond people together.

In his words:

With a
more expansive stretch, there’s a better chance that I’ll be around at the
precise, random moment when one of my nephews drops his guard and solicits my
advice about something private. Or when one of my nieces will need someone
other than her parents to tell her that she’s smart and beautiful. Or when one
of my siblings will flash back on an incident from our childhood that
makes us laugh uncontrollably, and suddenly the cozy, happy chain of our love
is cinched that much tighter.

There’s
simply no real substitute for physical presence.

Bruni suggests that we retire the concept of quality time:

We
delude ourselves when we say otherwise, when we invoke and venerate “quality
time,” a shopworn phrase with a debatable promise: that we can plan instances
of extraordinary candor, plot episodes of exquisite tenderness, engineer
intimacy in an appointed hour.

We can
try. We can cordon off one meal each day or two afternoons each week and weed
them of distractions. We can choose a setting that encourages relaxation and
uplift. We can fill it with totems and frippery — a balloon for a child,
sparkling wine for a spouse — that signal celebration and create a sense of the
sacred.

And
there’s no doubt that the degree of attentiveness that we bring to an occasion
ennobles or demeans it. Better to spend 15 focused, responsive minutes than 30
utterly distracted ones.

He continues:

But
people tend not to operate on cue. At least our moods and emotions don’t. We
reach out for help at odd points; we bloom at unpredictable ones. The surest
way to see the brightest colors, or the darkest ones, is to be watching and
waiting and ready for them.

That’s
reflected in a development that Claire Cain Miller and David Streitfeld wrote
about in
The Times last week. They noted that “a workplace culture that urges
new mothers and fathers to hurry back to their cubicles is beginning to shift,”
and they cited “more family-friendly policies” at Microsoft and Netflix, which
have extended the leave that parents can take.

Ah, yes. We are going to reform workplace culture to allow
parents to spend more time with their children. One is not allowed to say it,
but many other studies have noticed that this message is really addressed to
mothers. When parental leave is offered equally to mothers and fathers, mothers
take it and fathers do not. It might have something to do with biology of the
mother/infant connection. It might have something to do with the dominant
importance of mothers in the lives of children. It might have something to do with the man code that penalizes fathers who have to rush home to change diapers.

But, we know that in our gender neutered world, it is
necessary to say parental and not maternal leave, because feminists would be
sorely aggrieved at the thought that fathers are not leaving meetings early in
order to breast feed their children.

Such is the way that the culture tries to correct its
errors. Now, with any luck, we will no longer be hearing that quality time is
just as good if not better than quantity time. But, isn’t that Bruni’s
argument. Quantity time is of better quality. Why did anyone imagine that quantity
time cannot also be quality time?

2 comments:

He is correct on both counts. But when time is at a premium -- a scarce resource -- everything gets scheduled, labeled and set with an agenda.

We have virtual relationships. We sit at the same table and text each other. We believe we can have virtual teamwork, with work requiring intensive human relationships all over the nation, even the Earth, and get away with it. Why not at home?

If my home is an extension of ME and my performance, then yes... it must be all about quality in order to maximize its utility so the sacrifice of work time, earning power, self-fulfillment and biological necessities can be accommodated.

We are driven to distraction because we are maximizers. We seek to maximize our time, including time with our families. We do our best to "fit it all in." We dedicate so much energy to making everything superlative that we've lost sight on how to live and just BE with another human being we love. We don't eat together because mom and dad run shuttles based around activity schedules, lest we have poorly-rounded kids who can't get into one of the top-20 schools in the country. Hell, we drug our children so they'll perform and so our precious quality time is optimized. In the midst of all this chaos and distraction, we now think a child driven to distraction has a mental disorder requiring prescribed stimulants so the adults can deal with someone who is just... being a normal boy.

Bruno's weeklong vacation sounds like a delight. But I'm sure many can't afford it because their kid is at math camp instead of looking for frogs and snakes down by the creek. Perhaps that's a scheduled activity in the math camp curriculum? I doubt it. The camp's gotta deliver!